USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Burlington > Burlington, Connecticut : historical address > Part 3
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John Humphrey Sessions and Albert J. Sessions, who estab- lished themselves in Polkville, and afterward in the center of Bristol, in the trunk hardware business. This has grown to be the largest trunk hardware business in the United States ; and the great enterprises of the Sessions Foundry Co., and the Sessions Clock Co., have been farther products of the Sessions manufacturing genius. Another son of Calvin Sessions, Samuel Sessions, and a son-in-law, Isaac P. Lampson, established the great business of the Lampson & Sessions Co., at Cleveland, Ohio, and became prominent in the business and public life of that city.
Cloth making was also carried on early in the century at . Whigville, by Thomas .Lowrey, who made plain woolen cloth, and also satinet, in the factory since known as the E. K. Jones shop.
Hotchkiss & Fields had -perhaps the largest manufactur- ing business which has ever been carried on in Burlington, employing thirty to fifty men in manufacturing clocks, both cases and movements. Their case shop was near Joseph Scheidel's, their movement shop near Warren Bunnell's. This concern used to send the adventurous young men of Burlington to the South peddling their clocks ; and they came back with entertaining stories of how, with traditional Yankee shrewdness, and perhaps with a touch of that over- shrewdness which used to be symbolized by the wooden nutmegs, they had taken fabulous prices for Burlington clocks from the unsophisticated planters of the South. This firm failed about 1845 ; William Alford afterward occupied the movement shop for the manufacture of springs with a half-dozen hands; about 1855 the factory burned, and he with his workmen went to Bristol into the employ of Col. Dunbar.
A Burlington map in my possession dated 1855 shows near this site, D. F. Butler, clock factory, and C. B. Scocill, spoke factory; and near the railway station II. Wilkinson, screw driver and mineing knife factory, and Fenn a Guy- lord, children's fancy carriage factory. I have spoken of Thomas Lowrey's cloth manufacture in the old shop west
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of Whigville street. After his day Alfred and David Lowrey made clocks at this shop; Stever & Bryant built also for clock manufacture the factory on the east side of the street afterward used by Don E. Peck as a turning shop, and now by D. E. Mills as a storehouse. Don E. Peck himself for a time made children's carriages here.
English & Welch built a factory about the middle of the century near the Whigville bridge, from which traces of the old foundations may now be seen, and began there the manufacture of clocks. This firm did not long remain in Burlington, and the factory passed to a Mr. Payne, who continued the manufacture of clocks there for a time; but the enterprise thus started was the basis of the great English and Welch enterprises that have been so important in the industrial history of Bristol and New Haven. Gov. James E. English, Harmenus M. Welch and Pierce N. Welch of New Haven, and Elisha N. Welch of, Bristol were all in the line of descent from this Burlington firm; and Welch Hall on the campus of Yale University represents a part of one of the fortunes begun here, as the beautiful Methodist church in Bristol recalls the beginning of the Sessions manufacturing career on the stream east of here.
When the canal was built through Plainville and Farm- ington, and the new method of sending freight to market drove out the older method of teaming, Bristol and Forest- ville, with their shipping facilities at " Bristol Basin," as Plainville station was then called, began to distance Burling- ton in the competition ; and this tendency was increased when the railroad from Hartford was built through Bristol. Bristol's clock factories began to grow mightily, and Bur- lington's to move away. Many Whigville clock-makers moved to Forestville, when English & Welch bought the large J. C. Brown factory there, and Forestville for a time became quite a Burlington settlement.37
The Upson Nut Company, of Unionville, Conn., and Cleveland, Ohio, is another important manufacturing busi- ness in which Burlington can claim a maternal interest. Mr. Andrew S. Upson, its President, was a Burlington boy, and
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Mr. Charles H. Graham, though not a native of Burlington, lived here during boyhood in the Graham place, just north of the old Marks place.
J. Broadbent & Son of Unionville is another manufac- turing concern which made its small beginnings here, in the northeast part of the town.
So far as I know, the only manufacturing now carried on in Burlington is by the two turning factories, that of D. E. Mills at Whigville, and that of William Hartigan at the north end.
In 1861 came the great summons to Burlington, as to every town and village in the land, to show the strength of its manhood, and to make its great offering of life and treasure for the preservation of the nation. A member of your committee has gone over for me, name by name, the list of soldiers from Connecticut in the War of the Rebel- lion, as given in the adjutant-general's printed roster, and has made a list of those who are entered as residents of Burlington. The total number is sixty, and of that number forty-three enlisted in 1861 and 1862, before the system of drafts and bounties began. The number accredited to Burlington in the adjutant-general's office for the last two years of the war exceeds that appearing on this list ; but that credit may include substitutes who were not Burlington men, and may include some who were never actually mustered in to the state's regiments. I have thought it better not to in- clude these uncertain names. I do not know that any of those who enlisted from Burlington are still living here, except Charles B. Scoville. Marvin L. Gaylord and Willard F. Sess- ions are living in Bristol, and others in other places.
Twelve are recorded as having died in the service ; of these Edmond Rogers was killed in action; Gideon S. Barnes and Linus E. Webster died of wounds received in action ; five died prisoners, Martin Murphy and Philip Stino at Andersonville, Erastus S. Bacon at Charleston, Hoyt H. Bradley at Savannah, and George Wilkinson at Florence, S. C .; Franklin W. Hubbard, Edson W. Spencer, Lewis H. Johnson and Roland D. Benham died in the service,
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probably of disease or exhaustion. How many brought home lives broken by suffering and exposure, no statistics can tell.
Croffut & Morris, in their history of Connecticut in the War of the Rebellion, give the amount expended by each town for bounties, premiums, commutations and the support of families. The sum stated for Burlington is $20,250. This was at the very lowest period of Burlington's popula- tion, and this expenditure is about $20 for every man, woman and child. Of course that is merely the expendi- ture from the town treasury, and takes no account of the share of the town in the enormous state and national tax- ation. These figures suggest to us of a later generation the crushing load which fell upon the generation before us ; and surely they may demonstrate to all of us that Burlington, even at the time of her greatest decline, was not niggardly either of life or treasure.
It is said that when a Westerner once looked in dismay at the rocky hills of Vermont, and asked, "What can any one raise here?" the Vermonter replied, " We raise men." As I have been studying the history of Burlington, I have been especially struck by the number of men of influence and power that Burlington has produced.
Jonathan Miller's study was a most fruitful seed-bed for that raising of men. Five boys of his congregation were Lucas Hart, Romeo Elton, Leonidas Lent Hamline, Luther and Heman Humphrey. Lucas Hart, a son of Squire Simeon Hart, entered the Congregational ministry, was ordained pastor at Wolcott, but unhappily died two years later from illness brought on by too close application to study .**
Luther Humphrey was born in West Simsbury (now Canton), but his father, Solomon Humphrey, moved to Bur- lington in 1785, when Luther was only two years old. Solomon Humphrey was a poor man, and lived in a log cabin, near where Mrs. Ellen Alderman now lives. He began his studies with Mr. Miller, but later graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont. He was ordained to the
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ministry, worked sixteen years for the Missionary Society of Connecticut, and afterward had several parishes in Ohio and Michigan, and died in Windham, Ohio, in 1871, at the age of eighty-eight.""
Romeo Elton was born in Burlington in 1790. His father, William Elton, lived within a few rods from this spot. He graduated at Brown University in 1813, entered the Baptist ministry, and served in the active ministry until 1825, when he was called to the chair of Latin and Greek in his alma mater. He spent two years in Europe fitting him- self further for this professorship, and performed its duties with great distinction till 1843. He then went to England and lived there twenty-six years, when he returned to this country and again became a pastor in Boston, and died in the work of the ministry in 1870. While in England, he was one of the editors of the Eclectic Review, a magazine of selection from European literature. He seems to have had considerable wealth (which we may assume he did not acquire either in the ministry or in teaching), and when he died he endowed a Professorship of Natural Philosophy at Brown, a similar chair at the Columbian University, Wash- ington, D. C., and a scholarship at Brown, which is still existing and known as the Romeo Elton scholarship.30
Leonidas Lent Hamline was born in Burlington in 1797. His father's name was Mark Hamline, and he lived (I think) at the top of the hill south of the Dr. Mann house. The bishop's biographer says: "His education was at first directed with a view to the Congregational ministry," and I am sure that that statement points us again to Parson Miller's study. He finally chose the law, however, and for a time practiced law successfully at Zanesville, Ohio. In 1828 he became a member of the Methodist church, was soon afterward licensed to preach, and for sixteen years he was a circuit-rider in Ohio, widely known for his unusual eloquence and ministerial power. In 1844 he was a delegate to the General Conference of his church, that fateful confer- ence in which the northern and southern churches separated on the question of slavery. Mr. Hamline made one of the
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most important speeches on the northern side. Two bishops were to be elected by this conference, and Hamline was elected as the bishop from the north; he held that office until he was obliged to resign it on account of ill- health. He died in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, on March 23rd, 1865. Few American names are more honored in the Methodist church than that of Bishop Hamline; a typical figure of the rugged, circuit-riding, pioneer preacher, who made the Methodist church such a power in the growth of the West. Flood & Hamilton's Lives of the Methodist Bishops says that he was "a gigantic thinker, a great theo- logian, a princely orator, and one of the most efficient of ·revival preachers."31
But perhaps the most distinguished of any of the sons of Burlington was Heman Humphrey. Another son of Solomon Humphrey, he was six years old when his father moved to this parish. He was obliged to earn the money for his collegiate education, and taught school for a while in the East school, when he was only about fifteen. Afterward he hired out as a farm laborer to Gov. Treadwell at Farm- ington. Doubtless he came there into some contact with bkoos, and with cultivated men, a most stimulating experi- ence for a boy of his intellectual ambition. He was finally able to enter Yale, and graduated there in 1805. He en- tered the Congregational ministry, and was pastor at Fairfield, Conn., from 1807 to 1817, and at Pittsfield, Mass., from 1817 to 1823. Professor Tyler of Amherst says of him: "His labors in both these places had been blessed with re- vivals of religion of great power. He was already recognized as a pioneer leader in the cause of temperance." In 1823 Amherst College, then but two years old and in great danger of extinction, urged him to take its presidency, and he consented against the earnest protest of his Pittsfield church. He was President of Amherst for twenty-two years, and it can hardly be questioned that he did more than any other man to give Amherst its intellectual, moral and religious character. When he came there, there were 126 students; thirteen years later it had 259, and was the
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second American college in size, Yale then being first and Harvard third.
A story is told of him that illustrates his possession of the ready and genial wit so valuable in dealing with college students. When he went to the platform for one of his first lectures, he found tied in his chair a large and angry goose. Naturally the students were on the alert to see what the new Prex would do. "I am very glad to see, young gentlemen,"
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THE OLDEST HOUSE IN BURLINGTON. The "Justus Webster" House, built before 1780 Six Generations in a Direct Line Have Occupied This House.
said he, "that you are cooperating with the trustees in their efforts for the college. They have tried to engage pro- fessors and tutors for all the requirements of the college; but I see that some student finds none of them just what he needs, and has provided a tutor able to meet the require- ments of his intellect." He received a hearty round of cheers from the students, was at once voted to be all right, and the unhappy student who had smuggled in the goose was so ridiculed that he finally departed.
President Humphrey married Sophia Porter, sister of the elder Noah Porter, and had ten children. Three of his
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sons were ministers, two of them Professors of Theology, one, James, a prominent lawyer in Brooklyn, and for four years Member of Congress from that city. "Of the Sos graduates from Amherst during his ministry, forty became foreign missionaries, and 438 preachers of the gospel."">
Try to estimate the aggregate work of those five Burl- ington boys, think of the hundreds of new currents of influence which flowed out from them to all parts of the world, and who shall say that the pulpit and study of Parson Miller in old Burlington was a narrow and paltry field.
Burlington's contribution to American life seems to have been peculiarly in the educational field. Besides Professor Elton and President Humphrey we may recall Simeon Hart, third of that name, whose school for boys at Farm- ington rivaled during his life the reputation of Miss Porter's school for girls. He was a Yale graduate of the class of 1823, was town clerk, justice of the peace, and many times representative in the legislature, and was the first treasurer of the Farmington Savings Bank. Dr. Porter said at his funeral that he had had fourteen hundred pupils under his instruction. His pupils erected a monument to his memory in Farmington cemetery.
Nor are all your noted educators of past generations.
Bernard Moses, born in Burlington in 1846, graduated at the University of Michigan, took his doctorate at Heidel- berg, and was appointed Professor of History and Political Economy in the University of California in 1876, which chair he. still occupies. In 1900 President Mckinley appointed him a member of the Philippine Commission. He is the author of a considerable number of important books.3"
Many of you know Miss Ludella Peck, a native of Burl- ington, now Professor of Elocution in Smith College.
I may also mention your young townsman, Otis G. Bunnell, Vale '92. who has been engaged at Yale and else- where teaching.
Jennette Lee (Mrs. Gerald Stanley Lee), the well-known novelist and essayist, is a descendant of Solomon Humphrey.
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of whose illustrious sons I have already made mention.
The first Burlington physician was Dr. Peres Mann; his house was opposite Parson Miller's, and still stands there. I am told that for a time the manufacture of Shaker bonnets was carried on there. Dr. Mann was away during the War of the Revolution. I have heard one tradition that he served as surgeon on board a patriot privateer, and another that he was in France. Both may be true. His son-in-law, Dr. Aaron Hitchcock, succeeded him in practice and in the occupancy of his house; and his son was Judge Roland Hitchcock, of the Superior Court of Connecticut.
Lieut. David Marks was a leader among the early Epis- copalians of Burlington. His son, William Marks, who was equally prominent in the local Methodist church, was at one time a member of the state senate from this district. Of his sons, one, Rev. David L. Marks, became a Methodist ' minister, and was at one time Presiding Elder in the New York East Conference. Another son was a lawyer in Durham, N. Y., until he lost his health and came home to his father's house; another was a successful merchant in Naples, N. Y.
C. R. and R. A. Marks, prominent lawyers and leading citizens in Sioux City, Iowa, are descendants of David and William Marks.
Chauncey Brooks, son of Capt. Chauncey Brooks, having often gone to the South on these clock-peddling trips of which I have spoken, was finally invited to enter a firm with whom he had been accustomed to deal, became wealthy and the first president of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. His son, Walter, was once Republican candidate for Gover- · nor of Maryland.3+
Doubtless longer research, or a more intimate familiarity with your town, would enable me to greatly prolong this list of men who have become leaders in different parts of the country. But surely enough has already appeared to show that rugged Burlington, like rugged Vermont, has raised men; men of character as solid and enduring as Chippin's Hill and Johnnycake Mountain, men who by their teaching
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and influence have transmitted to thousands of others, some of whom may never have heard the name of Burlington, the spirit of loyalty to truth, of service of mankind, of fear of God, which they imbibed here in the hills of Burlington, and which I trust these hills may never cease to perpetuate and give forth.
And here let me quote once more from Parson Miller's dedicatory sermon: "On a subject in which we're all so deeply interested * it is impossible to know where to stop, but from the consideration that our time for pursuing it is exhausted. It would require a much longer time than can now be allotted to do justice to the subject."
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1770168
General Authorities and Foot-notes.
Printed material for the history of Burlington is rather meager. It includes Judge Roland Hitchcock's "Burlington," in The Memorial History of Hartford County, Vol. II; Noah Porter s "Historical Discourse," delivered at the bi- centennial celebration of Farmington; 1840, has a series of appendices, of which note N, by William Marks and Simeon Hart (the third) is devoted to Burlington; the periodical "Connecticut," published by the Missionary Society of Conn .. for January, 1897, (vol. 7, no. 1) has a very useful account of the Congregational church and ministers of the town.
Attention is called to an article "Old Burlington," by Seth Keeney, in the Bristol Press, July 9th, 1896, and to the Burlington supplement to the Bristol Press, June 14th, 1906. A file of this newspaper is in the Bristol Public Library.
Manuscript material includes the Congregational society records; the Metho- dist church records, in the hands of F. J. Broadbent of Unionville; the town records of Burlington, Farmington and Bristol; and a very full and valuable account of the houses and families of Burlington in the beginning of the 19th century, written by J. C. Hart in 1871. The original of this ms. is in the New England Historic Genealogic Society's collection in Boston; a copy made by the kind permission of this society is in the Bristol Public Library, and to it has been added a copy of a ms. of Mr. Hart giving a personal sketch of Rev. Jonathan Miller.
Authorities for particular statements will be found in the foot-notes.
(1) Porter's Hist. Disc., p. 27; "Bristol's Centennial Celebration," Historical Address, p. 30, and frontispiece map with accompanying explanation, which gives the actual survey and allotments of the land in Bristol.
(2) Porter's Hist. Discourse, p. 41.
(3) Memorial Hist. of Hartford County, vol. 2, p. 180.
(4) State Records (printed) vol 1, p. 261.
(5) Id., pp. 30, 143.
(6) Farmington Land Records.
(7) Colonial Records (printed) vol. 14, p. 378.
(8) Society records, vote of Dec., 1789.
(9) State Records (printed), vol. 2, p. 254.
(10) Porter's Hist. Disc., note N, p. 74; also J. C. Hart ms., pp. 11, 15, of the copy in the Bristol Library.
(11) J. C. Hart ms., p. 24 ut supra.
(12) See Appendix A.
(13) See a certified copy on the society records, following entries of Dec .. 1783. Mr. Marks's account of this church (Porter's Hist. Disc., note N, p. 72) is shown by this record to be quite erroneous.
(14) Porter's Hist. Disc., note N, p. 73.
(15) J. C. Hart ins., p. 77.
(16) The pamphlet " Connecticut," referred to under General Authorities, above.
(17) Porter's Hist. Disc., note N, p. 72.
(18) Bristol Press, July 9, 1896.
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(19) J. C. Hart ms., p. 29.
(20) This account is chiefly taken from the Methodist church records.
(21) State Records (printed), vol 1, p. 259.
(22) Porter's Hist. Disc., note N, p. 73.
(23) See, as to this early Episcopal church, "Historical Address," delivered by Epaphroditus Peck at the 150th anniversary of 1st. Cong. Ch., Bristol, also, "Moses Dunbar, Loyalist," by Epaphroditus Peck, Conn. Magazine, vol. 8, pp. 129, 297.
(24) Porter's Hist. Disc., note N, p. 72.
(25) "Katherine Gaylord," by F. E. D. Muzzy.
(26) Porter's Hist. Disc., note N, p. 74.
(27) The account of early manufactures I have taken in part from the J. C. Hart ms., in part from the recollections of Warren G. Bunnell and other residents.
(28) See the pamphlet "Connecticut," referred to above.
(29) Same as (28).
(30) See "Connecticut," as above; also Appleton's Cyclo. of Amer. Biography
(31) Appleton's Cyclo. of Am. Biog .; Am. supplement to Encyc. Brit .; Flood & Hamilton's Lives of the Meth. Bishops.
(32) Appleton's Cyclo. of Am. Biog .; Tyler's History of Amherst College; Funeral sermon by J. Todd, in Yale Univ. library.
(33) Appleton's Cyclo. of Amer. Biog.
(34) Seth Keeney's Bristol Press article; also the J. C. Hart ms.
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APPENDIX A.
Petition for Incorpation as a Society. (Ms. Records in State Library. Ecclesiastical. Vol. XIV, p. 331.)
To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Colony of Connecticut to be Con- vened at Hartford on the Second Thursday of May A Dom 1774.
The memorial of Titus Bunnel Ebenezer Hamblin and the rest of the sub- scribers hereunto all living and being Settled upon the Five westermost Tier of Lotts, west of the reserved Lands, so called, & North of the Society of New Cam- bridge in the Town of Farmington in the county of Hartford humbly sheweth -- That there are about Seventy Five Familys now settled upon said Lands, more than fifty of which are of the standing Denomination in this Colony, the rest are some of them Professors of the Church of England & some of them such as are called, Saturday Men,-That the List of the whole amounts to about £3500, and that of the standing society to more than £2500, That a few of us have been an- nexed to the society in Harwinton, three to New Cambridge and the' rest belong to the First Society in Farmington-the distance from which, together with ye Difficulties of Transporting our Familys and Children, especially in the Winter season, it being from Six to Eleven miles to sd First Society, and Four & Five to said Harwinton Society for such as are annexed to the same, renders it almost Impossible for us to Enjoy Society privileges or take benefit of Gospel Ordinances and a preached Word, (so desirable and essential to the welfare of ourselves & children)-Wherefore we most humbly pray your Honors to take our distressed Case in your wise Consideration & to form & establish us and all living upon the sd Five Tier of Lotts north of the north line of sd Cambridge Society to the north line of sd town of Farmington, to be an Intire Ecclesiastical Society, with Powers and Privigles-or if your Horors in your Paternal Wisdom should think it not yet best to goe so far in our behalf, that at least your Honors would allow us to hire Preaching for ourselves & Convene together and wholly free & Excuse us from paying anything further to the several societys whereunto we at present belong, either for preaching, Scholling or building of meeting houses, or any other pur- pose whatever, so that we may in some Sort be in a way to obtain those Easments and advantages that are common to our Brethen round about us or otherwise grant us Relief as your Honors in your wisdom shall think fitt and we as in Duty Bound shall ever pray.
Dated at Farmington, the 7th day of April, A. Dom 1774.
Joseph Bacon, Jun., Amos Doud, Zebulon Cole, Samuel Brockway, John Lowry, Timothy Hand, Edward Ward, John Panks (?), Jacb Robbords, Amos Tubbs, Elisha marshall, Hemy Darrin, Oliver Darrin, Jacob Robbords, Jun .. David Robords, Elisha Stedman, Joseph Bacon, Se., Cornell Marks. Joel Parks. Admiah Perks, Gideon Belding, Ezra Doud, Mispah North, Asa Yale, Asa Yale. Juner, Joe Whiteome, Stephen Brownson, Abijah Gillit, John Phelps, Ebenezer Domman (?)
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APPENDIX B.
Petition of Seventh-Day Baptists for Exemption From the Sunday Law. (Ms. Records in State Library, Ecclesiastical, Vol. XV, p. 205.)
To the Honorable Jeneral aSembly Setting at harford in may 1783.
Wherein their is an unhapey misunderstanding amongst the people in this State Espesially in the Society of west brittin Conserning the Sabbath it is accord- ing to the Laws of this State offencive to Do any Servil Labour on the first Day of the week and their is a number in the Society that holds that by the athority of the Sacred Scripture they are obliged to keep the Seventh Day of the week as a Sabbath and they hold that they are Commanded to Labour Six Days and that of God and to Rest the Seventh Day from all their Labonr, Exedus 20 Chapter and 9 and 10 verses and as the times is very hard and Dificalt in this our Day that it Calls very Loud on us to improve all the time that Gods allots us to maintain our famalis and pay the Cost of this nnnatrial war that we have had and our Request is that the honorable General assembly may point out Some way that we may obay the Commands of God and not intring on the Laws of this State for we mean to be Subject to the Sivil athority in Everything that Dose not intring on the Laws of God and Consciance and we being advised by Some of the athority of this State to make application to the aforesaid honorable General assembly that we may have the Liberty to Do our Labour that needs to be Done on our own posessions, not to intrude on our Neighbours that keep the First Day of the week for a Sab- bath, we hold our Selves a peasable people and act out of Consciance towards God and man we are many of us poor and need improve all our time to maintain our famileys and to pay our part of the Cost of the war as aforesaid but to be De- privd of one Sixth part of our time it is very hard and that is all that Some of us has to Live on we pray that you may act with wisdom and Do as you would be Done unto making our Case your own which is the prayer of your humble ser- vants &c
Hope Covey, Jolin Davis, Jonathan Palmenter, William Coon, (or Cook), Jo! Lewis, Elisha Covey, Amos Burdick, Stephen Lewis, Jared Covey, John Crand .. .. Benjamin Lewis, Jonathan Davis, Robert Burdick, Amos Stillman, Samuel Sti . man, Hezekiah West, Silas Covey, Roger Davis, Benjamin West, Juur., Cary Crandall, Bryant Cartwright, David Covey, Nathan Covey, Thomas Davis, Amos Burchek, jur., Elias Wilcox, Ebenezer Burdick, Lewis Burdick, Joseph Pahnenter, Jonathan Palmenter, Phinehas Palmenter, Benjamin hall, Benjamin West.
Negatived May 1783.
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